Movie magic: How Peter Jackson got The Hobbit down to size

Movies like The Hobbit work because of the total immersion offered by the story. We now have the right technology to allow audiences to believe that the movie was filmed in Middle Earth. Shooting The Hobbit required a new approach to film making to allow everyone to look the proper height. This was accomplished by using two different sets simultaneously to shoot a scene.

Several movies have come under fire recently for the techniques used to make actors appear shorter. Snow White and The Huntsman, for example, digitally grafted the faces of A-List actors onto the bodies of little-people. Similar techniques, including digitally shrinking actors of average height, were used in Lord of the Rings and as a result, groups like the Little People of America have released statements against the use of these techniques.

In The Hobbit, a film that is made almost entirely of a company of dwarves and a single Hobbit traveling with the rather tall Gandalf the Grey, most of the film would need to be shot so that everyone appeared to be the appropriate height. The solution that was used in this film involved recording the scene on two sets simultaneously, and merging the two sets together digitally. In these scenes there would be the actual set with props and a separate set that is almost entirely green screen. This allowed the director — Peter Jackson — to sit in between the two sets and watch as the scenes were acted out together.

This technique, called Scaled Slave Motion Control, was combined with the high frame rate cameras. And interesting byproduct of this was that it made it so every shot was nearly 2TB in size and required no less than four Red Epic cameras.

This technique may have also been the culprit behind why some of the scenes appeared to have props that were obviously fake when viewed at 48 fps. Most movies now use green screen material in parts of just about every scene, but this techniques combines a completely digital set with a completely real set in ways that haven’t really been done before.